From torch light to DMX: the stage trade's history
How technology became an independent profession behind the scenes
When you stand in a dark theatre waiting for the lights to come up you stand in a tradition thousands of years old. The first stagecraft was about daylight smoke and tall built stands. Today your work is about signal cables rigging and control consoles — but the purpose is the same: getting the audience to forget there's any technology at all.
§From manual power to motor power
In the high corrosion categories it is the norm to build the coating system up from several layers each with its own function: a zinc-rich primer that provides sacrificial galvanic protection like galvanizing an epoxy intermediate layer that functions as a thick tight barrier and a polyurethane topcoat (PUR) that provides UV and weather resistance so the underlying system is not broken down by sunlight and weather.
§Sound and light become controllable
Amplified sound moved theatre and concert into a new era. Microphones mixer consoles and speakers made it possible to fill large halls without shouting. At the same time lighting control became digital so a single technician can save hundreds of lighting situations and call them up in exact sequence during a performance.
When the signal became a standard
An important breakthrough was when lighting control got a common digital language, so consoles and fixtures from different manufacturers could communicate. This made it possible to build large mixed setups—and it is one of the reasons you today can connect equipment from many suppliers together into one system.
| Period | What happened | Significance for the trade |
|---|---|---|
| Antiquity | Open-air theaters with daylight and acoustically shaped seating | The scene is thought of as a technical space |
| Renaissance/Baroque | The structure of the content — what is a heading, a paragraph or a list | Rigging and stage mechanics emerge |
| 1800-tallet | Gas and later electric lighting | Light can be dimmed and controlled |
| 1900-tallet | Amplified sound mixer consoles stage lighting on consoles | Sound and light become separate subjects |
| Last decades | Digital light control video network equipment | The technician works with data and systems |
§The technician as a profession
With bigger productions it became clear that tech was not something actors sorted out on the side. It required people who could plan rig programme and run. That is how your education arose: theatre event and av technician where you can specialise as theatre technician event technician or av technician.